What Are Rights of Nature?

1972

• Southern California Law Review published law professor Christopher Stone’s seminal article, “Should trees have standing – toward legal rights for natural objects.” Stone described how under the existing structure of law, nature was considered right-less, having no legally recognized rights to defend and enforce.

• Sierra Club vs. Morton: If ships and corporations could be recognized by courts as legal personalities, wrote Justice Douglas, ecosystems under “the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life” ought to be able to sue to preserve themselves. Specifically, a federal rule could be fashioned to permit litigation in the name of everything from rivers and beaches to groves of trees and even air, to preserve those inanimate objects “where injury is the subject of public outrage.”

1989

• Professor Roderick Nash, published The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics. He explains how, throughout history, the right-less – slaves, women, others – have struggled to expand the body of legal rights to include themselves. Nash provides a context for how and why the body of rights is moving in the direction of expanding to include nature.

 

2003

• Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice, was published. Authored by South African attorney Cormac Cullinan, with Berry, he opens up a new front on the Rights of Nature – adding a significant spiritual and moral element to the legal and historic discussion begun by Stone and Nash.

 

September 19, 2006

• CELDF worked with the small community of Tamaqua Borough, in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, as it sought to ban waste corporations from dumping toxic sewage sludge in the community. CELDF assisted Tamaqua to draft a Rights of Nature law which banned sludging as a violation of the Rights of Nature. With the vote of the Borough Council, Tamaqua became the very first place in the United States, and the world, to recognize the Rights of Nature in law.

• Since 2006, CELDF has assisted over three dozen communities in ten states in the United States to develop local laws codifying the Rights of Nature.

 

2008

• CELDF was invited to meet with delegates to Ecuador’s Constituent Assembly that were tasked with drafting the country’s new constitution. At their request, CELDF drafted Rights of Nature constitutional provisions. In September 2008, the people of Ecuador voted in support of the proposed constitution, becoming the first country in the world to recognize the Rights of Nature in its national constitution.

 

December 2009

• The first UN General Assembly Resolution on Harmony with Nature (A/RES/64/196) was adopted under Bolivia’s leadership. This resolution requests the Secretary-General to issue a first Report of the Secretary-General on Harmony with Nature.

 

April 22nd, Earth Day 2010

• The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth is passed at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia. CELDF was involved with drafting the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth – which was released at the conference. It is modeled on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Following the conference, Bolivia submitted the declaration to the U.N. General Assembly for its consideration.

 

2010 – present

• Each year, under Bolivia’s leadership, the UN General Assembly adopts a new resolution on Harmony with Nature, and each year the Secretary-General submits a report on Harmony with Nature.

 

September 2010

• The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature was formed at a meeting held in Patate, Ecuador. With founding members including CELDF, as well as representatives from organizations in Africa, Australia, and the Americas.

 

November 2010

• An ordinance recognizing the Rights of Nature – drafted with the assistance of CELDF – was passed unanimously by the City Council in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as part of a ban on shale gas drilling and fracking. This the first major city in the U.S. to codify the legally enforceable Rights of Nature.

 

December 2010

• Law of the Rights of Mother Earth (Spanish: Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra) is a Bolivian law (Law 071 of the Plurinational State), that was passed by Bolivia’s Plurinational Legislative Assembly.[1][2]

 

2011

• The first Rights of Nature lawsuits were decided in Ecuador under the country’s constitutional provisions, upholding the rights of ecosystems. The first case, heard by the Provincial Court of Justice of Loja, featured the Vilcabamba River as plaintiff. Thus, the river itself was able to defend its own rights to ‘exist’ and ‘maintain itself’ – as it sought to stop a government highway construction project that was interfering with the natural flow and health of the river. The court ruled that the project be stopped.

 

2011 – 2015

• Each year, the UN hosted an Interactive Dialogue of the General Assembly on Harmony with Nature 2013’s advanced discussions on different economic approaches in context of sustainable development

 

June 2012

• A first step in recognizing the rights of nature at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – adopted the outcome document entitled “The future we want” (resolution 66/288), in which planet Earth and its ecosystems recognized as our home and that some countries recognize the rights of nature to promote sustainable development.

 

October 2012

• Bolivia adopted its Law Under the Mother Earth and Integral Development for Living Well. Passed by Bolivia’s Plurinational Legislative Assembly, the law recognizes Rights of Mother Earth in statutory law.

 

2012

• It was announced that the national government of New Zealand had reached agreement with the Whanganui River iwi, a local Maori people, to recognize a legal persona for the Whanganui River.

 

2012

• A campaign was launched in India by Ganga Action Parivar and the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance-India to recognize rights of the Ganga River. CELDF is partnered with the organizations to draft the National Ganga River Rights Act.

 

April 2013

• Mora County, NM became the first county in the United States to pass an ordinance banning all oil and gas extraction. Drafted with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance establishes a local Bill of Rights – including a right to clean air and water, a right to a healthy environment, and the rights of nature – while prohibiting activities which would interfere with those rights, including oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” for shale gas.

 

September 2013

• Community members from eight Oregon counties gathered in Corvallis, Oregon, to launch the Oregon Community Rights Network (ORCRN). Attendees of the Oregon Community Rights Summit released the Corvallis Declaration of Community Rights, calling upon communities across the state to join together in a movement to elevate the rights of people, their communities, and nature above the claimed rights of corporations.

 

2014

• The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature sponsored the world’s first Rights of Nature Tribunal in Quito, Ecuador. Subsequent tribunals have now been held, including in December 2015 at the U.N. climate change talks in Paris.

 

2014

• The Colorado Community Rights Network proposed a state constitutional amendment which would authorize communities to establish the Rights of Nature in law. CELDF assisted the Network to draft the amendment and is working with Networks in Oregon, Ohio, and New Hampshire to take similar steps.

 

November 2014

• GRANT TOWNSHIP, PA: For the first time, an ecosystem (Little Mahoning Watershed) in the United States filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit to defend its own rights to exist and flourish. Grant Township was sued in federal court by Pennsylvania General Energy over the Community Bill of Rights Grant Twp. passed in June 2014, which established the Rights of Nature and prohibited oil and gas wastewater disposal as a violation of those rights.

 

November 2014

• ATHENS, OHIO: Residents of Athens, OH, overwhelmingly asserted their rights to clean air, water, and to local self-governance, banning fracking and frack wastewater injection wells through the adoption of a Community Bill of Rights. They join Yellow Springs, Oberlin, Mansfield, and Broadview Heights, OH, which also adopted Community Bills of Rights banning fracking, beginning in 2012.

 

September 2015

• UN adopts 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development & ends summit with this film

  • Goal 8, target 12.8: people everywhere will have the awareness of sustainable development and harmony with nature

 

February 28, 2016

• The Green Party of England & Wales became the first UK-wide political party to vote Rights of Nature into their policies.

 

April – June 2016

• UN General Assembly hosted the first first Virtual Dialogue of the General Assembly on Harmony with Nature. The Dialogue addressed Earth Jurisprudence and discussed, among others:

1. The importance of applying Earth Jurisprudence principles to inspire citizens and societies to reconsider how they interact with the natural world in order to implement the Sustainable Development Goals in harmony with nature.

2. The need to recognize the intrinsic value of nature and to shift our perceptions, attitudes and behaviours from anthropocentric or human-centred, to non-anthropocentric or Earth-centred in which the planet is not considered to be an inanimate object.

3. The support for Earth Jurisprudence in laws, ethics, institutions, policies and practices, including a fundamental respect and reverence for the Earth and its natural cycles.

 

August 2016

• The first Experts’ Summary Report on Harmony with Nature addressing Earth Jurisprudence was published (A/71/266)

  • Pg. 4 – “economic growth for some has been achieved at the expense of the natural world, as well as of many human populations. Paired with unsustainable consumption and production patterns, the current economic system has relentlessly altered the dynamics and functioning of the entire Earth system to a degree never before seen in human history.”

  • “At the core of the current anthropocentric worldview, the Earth is viewed as a source of raw materials to be commercialized, exploited, modified, altered and privatized. This has significantly affected the health of the Earth, our life – giving source, and, by default, the well – being of humankind. Rising rates of poverty, famine and inequality reflect complex social realities that are intricately interwoven into the present ecological crisis, which, in itself, reflects a poverty of spirit.”

  • Pg. 5 – Fostering of Ecocentric democracy: “Groups and communities using decision-making systems that respect the principles of human democracy while explicitly extending valuation to include the intrinsic value of non-Human Nature, with the ultimate goal of evaluating human wants equally to those of other species and living systems that make up the Ecosphere.”

  • Pg 7 – “The first step is to include the rights of Nature in our governance systems, not by advancing its interests within the capital system as resources to be exploited, but by recognizing the fundamental legal rights of ecosystems and species to exist, thrive and regenerate...The human right to life is meaningless if the ecosystems that sustain us do not have the legal right to exist.”

 

February 2016

• The Green Party of England and Wales adopted a Rights of Nature policy platform. CELDF assisted Green Party members to draft the provisions, which call for lawmaking to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, and elevate nature’s rights over corporate rights.

 

September 2016

• The General Council of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin approved an amendment to their tribal constitution to recognize the Rights of Nature. The full Ho-Chunk membership will vote on the amendment in 2017. CELDF worked with Ho-Chunk tribal members to draft the amendment.

 

March 2017

• New Zealand – passes law declaring Whanganui River a living entity; recognizing the spiritual and holistic “personhood” of the Whanganui River and Te Urewera (which now have no “owners”) as part of the State’s ongoing settlement process with the Maori peoples. The Maori people consider that the river and forest are their ancestors, and that they have the responsibility and the privilege to care for them as family members.7

  • only river in world with such right, but for only five days before…

 

• • State of Uttarakhand in India – Himalayan state’s high court granted similar status to the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, then  a few days later to the Ganges and Yamuna glaciers that feed them. The law includes other parts of the natural ecosystem, extending these rights to ”virtually every creation of nature”

 

• “The ruling and the New Zealand law are variants of ‘rights of nature’ measures with theoretical roots dating back to the 1970s. They appear in the United States, too: More than three dozen US localities have ordinances ascribing varying types of rights to nature, or to specific natural objects. Their rise is in some ways a monument to the global exchange of ideas, with US activists advising national legislatures in Ecuador and Bolivia, whose laws in turn emboldened jurisdictions in the US and elsewhere.

September 2017

• The Victorian Parliament in Australia passed the Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act, which legally recognizes the Yarra as an indivisible living entity deserving protection and recognises the intrinsic connection of the traditional owners to the Yarra River and further recognises them as the custodians of the land and waterway which they call Birrarung.

 

January 2018

• The municipality of Paudalho in the State of Pernambuco, Brazil officially adopted the Rights of Nature into local law.

• The Ponca Nation in what is now Oklahoma became the first tribal nation in the U.S. to adopt Rights of Nature into tribal law.

 

September 2018

• Ho-Chunk Nation becomes first tribal nation in the U.S. to advance RoN into its constitution. “Everything here is sacred. We are all related. We are related to the trees, the birds, the animals, nature herself.  We all have a right to exist and thrive. Mother Earth is a sacred soul, and has rights not to be exploited for someone’s profits.” – Rekumani (Bill Greendeer), Deer clan, Ho-Chunk Nation.

 

December 2018

• The White Earth band of the Chippewa Nation adopted the “Rights of the Manoomin” law securing legal rights of manoomin, or wild rice, a traditional staple crop of the Anishinaabe people. This is the first law to secure legal rights of a particular plant species.

 

January 2019

• The High Court of Bangladesh recognized the river Turag and all rivers in Bangladesh as living entities with legal rights.

 

January 2019

 

• The National Lawyers Guild adopted Rights of Nature into the preamble of the Guild Constitution. It now reads: “We seek to unite the lawyers, law students, legal workers and jailhouse lawyers of America in an organization which shall function as an effective political and social force in the service of the people, to the end that human rights and the rights of ecosystems shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests…”

 

 

February 2019

• Toledo, OH passes the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR) with 61% of the vote and establishes rights of nature for Lake Erie. It stands as the first time a community voted specifically for a body of water to be granted personhood, rather than a community rights bill with a rights of nature statute attached to the regions ecosystem. LEBOR was immediately challenged by Wood County farmers, Mark, Melody, andTyler Drewes of Drewes Farms, who filed suit on the constitutional plausibility of the bill in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio Western Division. A decision on whether the court case is not yet finalized.

 

2019

• National Lawyers Guild in the United States amended the organization’s constitution to include the rights of nature, stating “human rights and the rights of ecosystems shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests….”

• Uganda enacted the National Environmental Act of 2019 in which nature is recognized as having “the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.”

• Residents of Exeter, New Hampshire, in the U.S., enacted a law securing the rights of nature, including the right to “a stable and healthy climate system.”

• Residents of Nottingham, New Hampshire, in the U.S., enacted a law securing the rights of nature, including the right to be free from “chemical trespass.”

• High Court in Bangladesh recognized legal rights of rivers.

• Yurok tribe in the U.S. initiated efforts to recognize legal rights of the Klamath River.

• Colombia, the Plata River was recognized as a “subject of rights.”

• A bill to recognize Rights of Nature was introduced into the Congress of the Philippines.

• A workshop on the rights of nature was held in the Swedish Parliament, the Riksdag.

• Rights of Nature and Future Generations Bill was introduced into the Parliament of Western Australian. It recognizes rights for “Nature, including all ecosystems, ecological communities and native species,” as well as “present and future generations.”

• Dutch municipality of Nordeast-Fryslan passed a motion that proposes granting special rights to the Wadden Sea. It also proposed an independent governance authority for ecosystem protection.

• Municipality of Florianopolis passed a law recognizing rights of Nature

• Congress of the State of Colima approved an amendment to the state constitution recognizing the Rights of Nature.

• A state constitutional amendment was introduced into  the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Amendment language contains: “The right to local self-government includes, without limitation, the power to enact local laws: (1) protecting health, safety and welfare by establishing the rights of people, their communities and nature and by securing those rights using prohibitions and other means; and (2) establishing, defining, altering or eliminating the rights, powers and duties of corporations and other business entities operating or seeking to operate in the community.”

• Federal lawsuit filed by Ohio communities, arguing systematic repression of qualified local Rights of Nature ballot initiatives.

• First time in U.S. history, the rights of a specific ecosystem were argued in federal court in defense of the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. Groups and individuals from across the globe show support.

• First time in U.S. history, in March 2020, a state was successfully pressured to enforce a local Rights of Nature law, in Grant Township, Indiana County, Pennsylvania.

• Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin asserted that the Menominee River has the right to exist naturally, flourish, evolve, remain unpolluted and carry out its natural ecosystem functions.

• Curridabat, Costa Rica afforded citizenship to pollinators, trees and native plants.

• Nez Perce Tribe General Council passed a resolution recognizing the SnakeRiver as a living entity that has rights, including the right to exist, flourish, evolve, flow, regenerate — and a right to its restoration.”

 

2020

• Spanish municipality of Los Alcázares approved an initiative to recognize the rights of Mar Menor, a lagoon.

• Ecuadorian Constitutional Court agreed to hear a case based on the Rights of Nature enshrined in Ecuador’s Constitution. It will hear arguments in a case to protect the Los Cedros Protected Forest from mining.

• Alliance for the Sacred Sites of Earth Gaia released the Declaration for the Protection of Sacred Natural Sites in 2020. It asserts: “Sacred Natural Sites require the highest form of legal protection through the recognition of rights of Nature.”

• Blue Mountain Council of New South Wales, Australia, resolved to integrate the rights of nature in its municipal planning and operations.

• Tŝilhqot’in Nation enacted a “ʔEsdilagh Sturgeon River Law.” It states: “The Aboriginal title and rights of the Tŝilhqot’in people includes the tu [waters] in our territory, including ʔElhdaqox [the Sturgeon River]. Nen [lands] and tu cannot be separated but are interconnected.” It recognizes that “People, animals, fish, plants, the nen, and the tu have rights in the decisions about their care and use that must be considered and respected.”

 

*** A portion of this timeline includes sections from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.